Banks in Qatar have increased the purchase limit of contactless debit and credit cards by 200 percent. Earlier, customers were allowed to do purchases up to QR100, but now this limit has been increased to QR300. Commercial Bank and QNB have already hiked this limit while other banks are also expected to follow suit. This initiative by banks will play an important role in limiting the spread of COVID-19 as customers are not required to enter the Personal Identification Number (PIN) while doing a transaction with these cards.
“Commercial Bank has just increased the Tap N Pay limit to QR300 instead of QR100, which means that you can pay now for purchases up to QR300 without the need to enter your PIN nor hand the card to the merchant on all Commercial Bank point of sales,” said Commercial Bank in a tweet.
QNB also made a similar announcement on its Twitter account. “For your safety and to speed up your payments you can now use your Tap & Pay card with an increased limit up to QR300 per transaction,” said QNB in a tweet.
Many banks and other financial institutions have urged their customers to opt for cashless payment and these contactless cards are an important option to go for cashless transactions.
Bank officials say that advancement in technology has made it very simple to make digital payments. These contactless cards have removed the need of pressing the PIN at the retail outlets. Contactless cards allow customers to pay by simply tapping the card on the Point of Sale (PoS) machines or ATMs.
Contactless transactions are as safe as traditional card payment transactions. Each transaction uses state-of-the-art security to generate a random verification code that cannot be counterfeited. It also provides more control, since the card does not leave customer’s hand to be swiped by the merchant.
Every time a customer performs a contactless transaction he gets informed immediately via SMS alerts. This way, he knows all the time the transactions that were performed using cards. The ease of using these cards is prompting residents to go for cashless transactions.
